Java Annotated Monthly – December 2016

The holidays are coming but the news never stops. This month we have articles about Java 8, 9 and beyond as usual, and a mixed bag of fundamentals, popular libraries and other JVM languages. As the end of the year is a good time for retrospectives (or it would be, if we weren’t so busy trying to finish everything before all the parties), we’re also taking a look at what it means to be a competent developer.

Community

Not all elections are doom and gloom. The 2016 JCP Executive Committee elections are over, and I personally am proud to see the London Java Community re-elected once again. The JCP is continuously improving to provide the kind of standards process a language like Java really needs, and it’s fantastic that user groups are involved in this as well as vendors and individuals, it shows the developer’s voice is important and can be heard.

Beyond Java 9

Just because the language developers are (quite rightly) taking the time to get Java 9 ready for release doesn’t mean the future of Java is entirely on hold, with value types being the most talked-about feature for a post-Java-9 release.